Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan

When Bill Colby first heard of Nancy Cruzan, he was 31 and new to a large Kansas City law firm. An attorney with lots of energy but not much experience, Colby seemed the perfect person to tackle a case the firm had agreed to accept on a pro bono (free) basis. It involved a young woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state for more than four years. Her family was seeking court permission to have her feeding tube removed. A colleague assured Colby that the matter would probably amount to 'no more than a half-day trial in probate court.'

This book is Colby's spellbinding and moving account of how that half-day stretched into a three-year legal battle that changed forever the way Americans think and talk about death. In time, a blue-collar family from a small Missouri town would find itself thrust uncomfortably into the national spotlight, and Colby, the greenhorn lawyer, would find himself arguing the first right-to-die case before the United States Supreme Court.

Bill Colby is an exceptional storyteller, and his account of the Cruzans' long struggle to allow Nancy to die the death she would have wanted belongs solidly in the ranks of legal thrillers like A Civil Action and Erin Brockovitch. The real-life plot has more twists and turns than a detective novel and builds to several dramatic climaxes. Future attorney general John Ashcroft and future Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr have cameo roles. Few will be able to put the book down.

But this is not simply the story of how Nancy Cruzan won the right to die, or of an inexperienced lawyer's trial by fire. The book also looks behind the scenes at the painful human cost exacted in a highly public legal fight. Most memorably, it is the story of Nancy's father, Joe Cruzan, a strong-willed sheet-metal worker who in Colby's skilled rendering becomes a tragic and unforgettable hero.

After reading Long Goodbye, those who have not done so will surely be moved to have 'the talk' with their loved ones'”a conversation that conveys their wishes regarding life-prolonging measures'”and to draw up a 'living will' that formalizes those wishes. If not, they risk being consigned to the state of half-death that Nancy Cruzan and her courageous family endured for seven anguished years.

To learn more about living wills and other medical directives, click here.

Ron M. Landsman, P.A.

Ron M. Landsman has been practicing elder law since 1983, before it was known as elder law, originally with Landsman and Laster, Washington, D.C., then Landsman, Eakes and Laster, also in Arlington, VA, and since 1990 in his own practice in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has been among the most active members of the...

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Margaret A. O'Reilly, PC

Margaret A. O’Reilly is an estate planning and elder law attorney with over thirty-five years of legal experience. Attorney O’Reilly graduated from Duke University with a degree in psychology, and received her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. For over 15 y...

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Hale Ball Carlson Baumgartner Murphy PLC

Loretta Morris Williams is a certified elder law attorney by the National Elder Law Foundation. Ms. Williams was admitted to the Council of Advanced Practitioners, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) in 2012. She serves as President of the Virginia Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. Ms. Willia...

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